idea of learning a
native language, as I never stopped anywhere more than a few weeks; and
as the missionaries have done good work in the cause of philology, my
services were not needed. I was, therefore, dependent on interpreters
in "biche la mar," a language which contains hardly more than fifty
words, and which is spoken on the plantations, but is quite useless
for discussing any abstract subject. In nearly every village there
is some man who can speak biche la mar.

Colonization

As we have seen, colonization in the New Hebrides was begun by the
whalers, who had several stations in the southern islands. They had,
however, little intercourse with the natives, and their influence
may be considered fairly harmless.

More dangerous were the sandalwood traders, who worked chiefly in
Erromanga. They were not satisfied with buying the valuable wood
from the natives, but tried to get directly at the rich supplies
inland. Naturally, they came into conflict with the natives, and
fierce wars arose, in which the whites fought with all the weapons
unscrupulous cruelty can wield. As a result, the population of
Erromanga has decreased from between 5000 and 10,000 to 800.

Happily, the northern islands were not so rich in sandalwood, so that
contact with the whites came later, through the coprah-makers. Coprah
is dried cocoa-nut, which is used in manufacturing soap, and the
great wealth of cocoa-nut palms attracted coprah-makers as early
as the 'Seventies of the last century. They were nearly all ruined
adventurers, either escaped from the Noumea penitentiary or otherwise
the scum of the white race. Such individuals would settle near
a good anchorage close to some large village, build a straw hut,
and barter coprah for European goods and liquor. They made a very
fair profit, but were constantly quarrelling with the natives, whom
they enraged by all sorts of brutalities. The frequent murders of
such traders were excusable, to say the least, and many later ones
were acts of justifiable revenge. The traders were kept in contact
with civilization through small sailing-vessels, which brought them
new goods and bought their coprah. This easy money-making attracted
more whites, so that along the coasts of the more peaceable islands
numerous Europeans settled, and at present there are so many of these
stations that the coprah-trade is no longer very profitable.

Naturally, many of these settlers started plantations, and thus gre